


Special

by thecountessolivia



Category: London Spy
Genre: Angst, Arguments, Bars and Pubs, Childhood Memories, Homophobic Language, M/M, Missing Scene, Romance, Secret Intelligence Service | MI6, Self Confidence Issues, Slow Burn-ish, make-up sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 19:43:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6091957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The immediate aftermath of Alex crying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Soho

Oh Christ. No.

"I only meant..."

He rushes forward, flings both arms about Alex and instantly feels the thick, hot tears pool into the crook of his neck. Somewhere in the panic that's thrashing about his brain a voice screams out absurdly that the tears will scorch themselves into his skin and forever mark him with an acid burn reminder of what he's just done.

"I only meant... if it's something you want. Look, no, listen, forget it. Please. Please. OK? It's just because..." The words rattle out of him, half-formed and useless to stop the silent sobs.

Alex is shaking in his arms and Danny is groping at his shoulder blades, cradling the back of his head. A group of women out for a fag stare at them with painted mouths agape, then look to each other and mutter.

And then it comes to Danny. Alex isn't shaking. Alex is straining to pull away. And when he finally lets go, Danny is condemned to face the tear-welled eyes again and it's the nearest he's come to a complete cataclysm.

"I..." Nothing else escapes Alex's parted mouth, though it struggles to form something more. Danny clasps at his cheeks, grips at his shoulders, as if touch could undo what his words are failing to.

Then Alex takes three strides back. They are wide enough to take him away from Danny and into the crowd that rushes past them, out of reach.  
  
"No, wait... Alex."  
  
Before Danny can shove past, the beautiful, stricken face turns from him and the tall, elegant figure slips from sight, swallowed up by the well of the tube stop.

"Alex! Fuck. Alex!"

"You OK, love?" One of the smokers shouts after him.

He spins about and, from the depths of the filthy hell of self-loathing he's mired in, he hurls his rage at her through the crowd.

"Fuck off. Fuck off! Fuck the fuck off!"

\---------

He's slumped on the curb, pulling at fistfuls of hair, crashed into by apologetic passer-bys. Ten frantic texts, five voicemails and three cigarettes later, he's given up. What's the point if Alex is on the tube? What's the point of chasing him to his doorstep and making things ten times worse by pleading and weeping into his intercom? What's the fucking point, generally?

What was he actually trying to say through his dismal, vile suggestion?

_Refute me. Argue with me. Tell me you never would. Tell me I'm special. The one. Tell me we're special. Prove to me you love me._

Now what? Now there is only the gaping void of his petty rage into which he's flung the only thing that matters.

Text Scottie, seeking sympathy? He'll only get bollocked - the least he deserves.

He staggers up and winds himself into the crowd, towards the familiar neon labyrinth of Soho, in search of God knows what.

\-----------

Tinker's is deserted and as sticky and depressing as he remembers. They're blaring out all the cringe-worthy clichés - ABBA, Erasure.

He orders a lager and slouches on a barstool, glaring about the grim, grimy interior. So that's what the place looks like when he's not out of his mind at three in the morning, getting groped, high or sucked off in the loo. Maybe this isn't even the same place, except the bleach-haired, emaciated barman with sarcastic weasel eyes claims to know him.

"Oh hey, sweetie. It's been too long. How's Jamie?"  
  
"Who? Oh right."

It's been years. Jamie had been nicking the coke Danny had been getting by on selling. Jamie had announced he'd fucked two of Danny's friends then vanished.

A pot-bellied man and his Chinese boyfriend are on the dancefloor and Danny stares through their clingy, awkward sway, into nothing.

"It's dead in here."  
  
"Yeah, no shit. Closing down in two weeks."

Danny's eyebrow arches above his pint and the weasley man shrugs.

"...Everyone tells you 'Oh, Soho. Gentrification, hipsters, tourists, Arabs, Russians'. Whatever. Everyone also forgets that it's 'cause boys like you stopped turning up to buy our beer."

Danny looks down and says nothing. The man has leaned on the bar and is twirling a beer mat, trying and failing to sound playful.

"...'Cause you're all curled up on the sofa with your boyfriends, watching Netflix, picking out John Lewis dining sets." He's grinning at Danny. "Buying up flats in Brighton or, fuck knows, Milton Keyes maybe."

Danny feels a twitch of anger. He hates the place, hates the man.

"And what's wrong with sofas? What's wrong with dining sets?"  
  
'It's boring, innit?"  
  
"And what's wrong with being boring?"  
  
"Nothing, except it's all gonna come out one way or another. You all just end up swapping partying for domestic dramas. Different kinds of kicks."

Danny opens his mouth and wants to argue but feels a vibration in his pocket. He dives in after it, shaking hands pawing about for his phone. He stares at the message: no words.

A night-time picture of Millennium Bridge.

He just manages to catch the arch of the barman's sardonic eyebrow as he scrambles from the barstool and for the door.


	2. Bankside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over Danny's shoulder, through the soft dark hair the wind has torn to wisps in front of his eyes, Alex watches the Thames. Somewhere past the river's dark bend, amidst gleaming bridges that stitch the city's halves to itself, Alex knows of another passage across. An underwater tunnel, concrete and lit with sickly fluorescence, connects his place of work to Whitehall. It's an internet rumour, a fantasy of conspiracy theorists, and he's walked it a hundred times. It pierces the river like fear does a heart.

It spans just over three hundred metres. He's quite certain he's standing precisely at its halfway point.

A Western wind, sheared by the cables and the steel transverse arms of the bridge, hurls itself past Alex. He faces and endures its unforgiving gusts, and peers towards Embankment where the river and its luminous banks bend into blackness and disappear from view.

He's cold. His eyes feel heavy and swollen. His hands are in the pockets of his black wool coat. He keeps one on his phone. With the other he feels about and fondles the small object he'd purchased earlier that week.

He was here the weekend the bridge had opened to the public - he'd just turned twelve. Already its worrying wobble had been noted and rumours swirled about the need to close it for corrective works. Even now, with dozens of retrofitted dampers devouring the resonance that had made it tremble, Alex thinks he can feel the slender structure shudder and sway beneath his feet. A psychosomatic sensation, he guesses. A fitting byproduct of his own nausea and fear.

Back then he'd been brought here by a tutor, a kind man with a love of bridges, applied learning and spurious outings with his private pupils. Another boy, offspring to one of the few families on friendly terms with Frances, had joined them. Though they rarely spoke, Alex had reasoned that shared lessons, shared age and presumed shared intelligence made the boy his friend.

Sat on the birch-lined green outside the Tate, pencils in hands and notepads in laps, they'd set about working through the problems of lateral movement and vertical loads assigned to them by the tutor. Within minutes Alex had stood up and, whilst the other boy still scribbled furiously, read out his correct calculations one by one.

That same day, the boy had waited until their chaperone's attention was elsewhere and, with a preteen's new-found relish for swearing, let his mind be known to Alex.

"Turner, how come you're such a fucking know-it-all?"  
"I'm not--"  
"Is it 'cause you're an arse-kissing faggot? Or an autistic freak, like everyone says you are? Or both?"

It didn't matter how much the adults coaxed, scolded, even pleaded. Alex did not say another word that day, nor for several days after.

The river is a strip of darkness before him, sliced through with the gleaming lights of Blackfriars bridge. Alex ponders how easy - all too easy - it is to believe that nothing lies beyond the bend.

It's been twenty minutes since he texted the picture to Danny.

\-------------------

"I was so worried. So worried. You scared me so much. I'm so sorry, Alex, I'm so so sorry."  
  
"You want me to leave you."

"No... no! It's just..."

"How many?"

"How many... people I've done things with? Been with? What, Alex, what?"

"How many people should I sleep with?"

"Wait, you're not being fair..."

"To know what it should feel like?"

"It doesn't work like that, it's more if you're not..."

"What will it change? Please, tell me. How many people before..."

"...if you're not sure I'm the one for you. You never tell me I am. You never tell me..."

"...before I can come back to you?"

\----------------------

In time they both stop crying and sway slowly and silently in each other's arms. Alex feels the embrace weighed down with the sadness of uncertainty, of things left unsettled and unresolved. The heavy load of truth, of answers, rests entirely with him.

_The truth is I'm terrified._

Over Danny's shoulder, through the soft dark hair the wind has torn to wisps in front of his eyes, Alex watches the Thames. Somewhere past the river's dark bend, amidst gleaming bridges that stitch the city's halves to itself, Alex knows of another passage across. An underwater tunnel, concrete and lit with sickly fluorescence, connects his place of work to Whitehall. It's an internet rumour, a fantasy of conspiracy theorists, and he's walked it a hundred times. It pierces the river like fear does a heart.  
  
He wants to flood it. Or brick it up.  

 _I know you are special because I am scared for you. For us._  
  
"I'd like us to go home, Alex."

_I love you because I am afraid._

He nods and lets his hand be clasped and guided by Danny's. The other he lets slip back into his coat pocket and coil about the empty vessel of the cryptex drive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Synchronised footfall was responsible for the vibration which caused the [Millenium Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge,_London) to close almost immediately after it opened in June 2000.  
> \- A [rumoured tunnel under the Thames](http://londonist.com/2015/04/londons-rumoured-secret-tunnels) is supposed to connect MI6 to the seat of British government  
> \- Enough with the angst. Time for some glorious make-up sex in the next chapter.


	3. Vauxhall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He recalls all the times he's been close enough to hear that heart quickened by running, hikes or sex. He knows what it sounds like when Alex comes. He tries not to think how it must have stuttered and skipped over last night's tears.

The rustle of bedsheets reaches him through the rain.

"Danny?"

He stubs out his cigarette and turns from the open window.

"I'm here."

\----------------------

They had followed the windy Thames Path back to Vauxhall, hands in pockets, shoulder to shoulder. They didn't speak. Words were mistrustful things, poised behind dark corners, ready to peddle more pain.

It was one in the morning by the time they'd climbed the steps to his flat. Sarah and Pavel were out and the place smelled of an earlier gathering, faint skunk, fags and female perfume. Danny left Alex to wander into the bedroom while he moved through the kitchen and lounge, turning off lights and picking up scattered dishes and beer bottles. He was grateful for the bustle of his new-found fastidiousness. At least it broke through the silence of his tired brain.

He washed his face and rinsed his mouth in the kitchen sink. He poured out two glasses of water and shuffled back to the bedroom. He found Alex sat upright on the edge of the bed, stripped to his t-shirt and boxers, hands braided tightly between his knees. In the dim, brass-coloured light seeping in through the window their eyes met and the heavy knots in Danny's chest multiplied and tightened. It must have been nearly two hours since either one of them had said a word.

Danny set the glasses on the sideboard and inched closer. Still silent, Alex slipped to his knees. Fingers reached for the laces of Danny's converse and unknotted them slowly. He watched blankly as he was divested of his shoes and socks, the latter neatly balled. His jeans and jumper followed, removed with the same care then folded up with Alex's clothes.

For a moment they stood face to face in the dark and quiet, then slid into bed and spooned close. Their hands fell onto each other's bodies and stilled, habitually, over same familiar patches of skin. They slept.

Hours later Danny woke to the bedroom hot and stifling. The boiler must have glitched again, or been left on to belt out heat all night.

He felt sticky and faintly nauseous. Alex's breath beside him came in shallow, rapid puffs and a dream twitched beneath his eyelids. He'd kicked off the covers. Danny lingered to watch him for signs of wakefulness or nightmare then slipped from the bed. He snuck through the silent flat, turned off the boiler and returned to open the bedroom window as quietly as he could manage. The cold night air set about sucking the oppressive heat from the room. Outside, the fine mist of rain that had trailed them home had thickened into a downpour.

Danny drew himself whole onto the windowsill and let the flush of excess warmth drain from his body. He tried his best not to let his eyes catch the nearby sleeping form, so familiar now but still so impossible in his bed.

The memory of their evening had solidified into a dull ache that reached beyond his heart and burrowed into every muscle.

In a petty frenzy he'd told him to leave. To find and see others. And as the ache grew into guilt, Danny now circled back, over and over, to another conversation that nagged him with a reminder of how Alex saw himself. Of how Alex was before and without him.

He lit up. The odd raindrop fell cold and sharp against his skin. 

\----------------------

"Please, Danny. Stop."  
  
"Anything more than five seconds of me looking at you and you do this."  
  
"Do what?"  
  
"You either hide or you start gurning. I love the gurn but..."  
  
"I can't imagine why you'd want to spend any time at all studying my face."  
  
"Not studying, Alex. Admiring. OK - ogling, even. Do I really have to say it?"  
  
"There's nothing to admire."  
  
"Sorry. Sorry, I don't mean to laugh but - you can't seriously tell me you think you're unattractive? Me - yeah, I look like a snotty child. But you?"  
  
"Not unattractive. Just odd-looking. Everything stern or too big. And you're beautiful."  
  
"You don't suppose anyone could think the same about you?"  
  
"I know you do. But I don't see why."  
  
"Because it's true. The way some things just are. And if it weren't me falling head over heels for you then it could have been anyone else in the world. Can you not imagine that?"  
  
"No."

\----------------------

He settles back on the bed and offers water fetched from the sideboard. He's relieved to hear himself speak again. 

"Did you sleep at all?"

A small nod between sips.   
  
"Did I wake you or did the heat? Someone left the boiler blasting."

"The rain did, I think."

Alex's voice is the shade Danny loves best, baritone pitched higher, wrapped soft and sleepy over hushed words. Eyes glint up at him through the dark. Held by them, he tries not to shake and weep.

"Alex, please tell me what to say."

"It's OK. It's OK, Danny. Will you touch me instead?"

"My hands are cold. The window..."

"Then you'll cool me off. Please?"

Hips shift and arms lift in the dark, letting Danny slide the t-shirt and boxers over long, pliant limbs. He folds down close, cheek pressed to Alex's heart, cool fingers cradled loosely over Alex's cock. He drifts on the rise and fall of Alex's chest, listens to the secret code spelled out by the steady beat within. He feels it echoed in his grasp, where the blood vessels fill under his touch. 

He recalls all the times he's been close enough to hear that heart quickened by running, hikes or sex. He knows what it sounds like when Alex comes. He tries not to think how it must have stuttered and skipped over last night's tears.

It's barely there, just an echo of movement, but Alex's hips rise into his hand. The lightest touch drifts over Danny's hair. It's enough, an urging better than any words. Beyond it, there is stillness.

He moves to dome his body over Alex, palms above his shoulders, knees flanking his sides. Careful not to touch - not yet. Heat radiates up at Danny from Alex's bare skin. He watches the speckled shadows of falling rain refract through the open window and dance over Alex's face, making it inscrutable.

"Where? Show me."

"Here."

The pointing finger falls away. Danny's lips lower and open cautiously over the hollow of Alex's throat, where a droplet of sweat has gathered and the soft smattering of chest hair just reaches. He seeks out that pulse again, with all its secrets. His tongue circles and dips, as if into a well, and finds the rhythm of Alex's heart caught beneath shortened breaths. All the tension in Alex's body seems to pool here, trembling in tendons, strangled in swallows, even as the rest of him struggles so hard - and Danny knows this - to hold perfectly still. 

All Danny wants is to uncoil him, to set him in motion. Something in him insists that if he fails now, Alex will never open up again. Words won't cut it. He brings his weight down whole, tangles his legs with Alex's, hips, bellies then chests pressed entirely together. His lips draw up over neck, jaw, cheek to Alex's mouth. They find it wet, soft, parted in expectation. He delves in deep. He looks for reciprocity. He finds it at last when a gasp snaps in Alex's throat and floods Danny's kiss with warmth. He comes up for air and has it snatched from his lungs by the desperate clutch of Alex's arms. 

Arms and legs snare him tightly now, as if Alex wanted to pull Danny into himself whole. There's no more breath left for kisses, barely enough for the brushing of lips and darting out of tongues. Only brows pressed together and eyes locked with shining intensity, as their hips push hardening cocks into a slow, rolling grind. 

In Alex's clasp Danny finds room enough to shift downward. Fingers tangle and tug in his hair. His brain swims on giddy waves, made from the sighs that surge from Alex with every slide of Danny's fingers and every nuzzle of cheek and lips against Alex's collarbone. 

Alex reaches between them, hand groping and grasping after. 

"Danny, let me..."

Danny wants to let him. His cock strains raw and wet inside his boxers and he wants to feel the familiar stroke of Alex's hand - always so fast and feverish, always almost too rough. He wants to see Alex's face when Alex makes him come, so awed and ecstatic, as if the orgasm were his own. But not yet.

"I need you to be a mess for me, Alex, please..."

In answer, Alex arches up against him, thighs lifting and splaying wide above where his cock lies hard, flushed and sticky-wet. Danny's heart twists and it's all he can do not to stare down with base want. He peers up, nearly panting, and Alex's eyes meet his with a flutter. A nervous flick of tongue lashes his lips and a swallow passes his throat. 

Danny thinks of all the bodies he's held and fucked: dozens - Christ, is it hundreds? - of them. He thinks of all their posturing and pretenses. None could have come close to matching the sincerity and vulnerability of Alex's arousal. The knots in his chest threaten to wring out more tears. When it leaves him, his voice feels hoarse and cracked.

"You're beyond beautiful. It hurts to look at you."

A small, pained smile curves Alex's mouth and his fingertips stretch down to quiver a caress over Danny's cheekbones. The same sweet, hushed tone as before comes to answer. 

"Then don't. Keep touching me instead."

Danny's eyes fall closed. He sinks down and runs the stubble of his cheek along Alex's inner thigh, rough against the tension that holds its muscles tight. Lower and lower until he's setting his teeth tenderly over the skin stretched smooth and taut over Alex's hipbone. His fingertips press the delicate strip of skin beneath Alex's balls and when they circle there to bear pressure, Alex's breath shallows and his hands tighten in Danny's hair. His calves slide and settle over Danny's shoulders.

Danny's mouth trails to where the precum from Alex's cock has streaked warm, shiny and slick against his stomach. He laps at it, slow and languid, then lifts the tip of Alex's cock onto his tongue, the full swollen weight of it yielding one more teasing taste. His fingers between Alex's legs slip lower and brush, feather-light, over tight rings of muscle.

Lips wrapped wet and loose, they slide over Alex's cock and when moans reach him he finds they are his own joined with Alex's. His wrist is clasped and pulled up. A small bottle snagged from the shelf above the bed is pressed into his hand. A pillow follows, folded and pushed urgently beneath Alex's hips to lift him and bring him wider and closer to Danny's hands and mouth.

Danny's knees slip against the sheets. His thighs tense and twitch and his cock aches with the nagging need to fuck. But this, this first. This above all. To have every part of Alex a writhing tangle of sweat-slicked skin and muscle under Danny's touch. 

A quick, practiced gesture of one hand and his fingers are back to leave a slick, cooling trail between Alex's cheeks. They work him open one by one. 

Alex's heart is everywhere. It thrashes deep in Danny's mouth, it throbs around Danny's fingers as they curve, twist and caress from the inside to jolt Alex with pleasure. As if every tiny capillary in Alex's body had an urgent message to deliver.   

Danny's ears ring with blood and his vision blurs in the frantic pace he's set around Alex's cock, matched to the thrusts of his fingers and the hips that are fucking his mouth. Through his eyelashes he just catches a glimpse: Alex snatched up to his elbows as if by force, shaking, eyes desperate and begging, mouth wide and moving with the need to say and feel everything at once. 

And when the electric wet warmth surges and spills against the back of Danny's throat, it comes with an unbroken plea of _don't stop, don't stop, don't stop_.

As if Danny ever could. 

\----------------------

"I need you to know something."

"Anything. I'll listen. Tell me."

"I'm afraid. All the time. Every day. For us. For you."

"Afraid you'll lose this."

"Yes. Last night, for a while, it almost seemed easier to imagine that if I'd-"

"Alex..."

"But nothing would change. Nothing. I could leave and I'd still fear for you."

" _Fear_ for me? Alex, that's-- why?"

"I never want to see you hurt. If anything were to happen-"

"You won't. You _won't_. I'll never give up on us now, do you understand? Ever. No matter what happens. I promise." 

\----------------------

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Danny walk from Millennium Bridge back to Danny's flat in Vauxhall. The walk would most likely have taken them just over an hour. It would have followed the footpath along Thames' South Bank most of the way. 
> 
> Aaaaaand that's it, folks. I'm pretty much tapped out when it comes to writing about these two. 
> 
> I might take drabble / ficlet requests, if anyone is really, really keen. Otherwise, thanks to everyone who's read over the past few months. 
> 
> Signing off,
> 
> TCO
> 
> P.S. This chapter was soundtracked by [Wild Beasts' "End Come Too Soon"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-qZgIz79ts).

**Author's Note:**

> A missing scene I wrote some time ago, now polished up and with even more angst!


End file.
